The paper is an attempt to evaluate the efficiency of Pena's DP-2 method over a host of methods used to make composite indices. To undertake this exercise, variables and data used and methodology adopted in Human Development Report 2011 are employed along with nine other methodologies employed...

In this paper we construct thirteen different types of composite indices by linear combination of indicator variables (with and without outliers/data corruption). Weights of different indicator variables are obtained by maximization of the sum of squared (and, alternatively, absolute)...

Over the last few years, environmental issues have entered into policy design, particularly development and growth policies. Natural resources are considered necessary production inputs and environmental quality is considered a welfare determinant. The integration of environmental issues into...

This study developed an Education Efficiency Index for 31 countries, both developed and developing, which can be used by everybody involved and interested in education such as teachers, lecturers and policy makers. The index is used to demonstrate that countries which invest deeply in education...

"The aim of this short book is to understand which countries do well on key indicators and why. After a short philosophical and historical survey of the literature to put the book into context, the Better-Place Index is developed. This is subsequently tested against a number of policy variables,...

The analysis and measurement of poverty is a crucial and unsolved issue in the field of social science. This work aims to measure poverty as a multidimensional notion using a new composite indicator. However, subjective choices as different weighting schemes on the indicator's construction could...

Finance long has been described as the quot;governorquot; of economic development. Yet there are no agreed indicators of financial development or measures of the efficiency with which finance provides services to other sectors. This paper clarifies the choices by distinguishing price from...